December 2005 - Posts

Documentation Denialists

This entry on Julia Lerman's fine blog, asked the question, "so very unusual that it wasn't covered in the documentation?"  This reminded me of a huge, old bugbear of mine.  Cowardly authors that always only demonstrate the obvious case, while blatantly ignoring the near impossible cases that occur almost as often as the obvious case.  It often makes me wonder whether they either haven't used the tech they are writing about, or they would mention the difficult case, or they have but that them and their writing skills have been bettered by the difficult case. 

A third more sinister thought haunts me during paranoid times after extended sleep deprivation, and that is that people who have mastered the difficult case intentionally suppress it from public communication, leaving it to serve as some nasty rite of passage into the Fellowship of the Dark Gurus.  Unfortunately I can't think of a single really evil example now, but in future as these incidents occur I will be charting them on a special section on my blogspace.

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Programmers.
Philip Chu has these choice bits of wisdom for the savvy coder.
GotDotNetNuke!

Wow!  My earlier misgivings evaporated a few hours after the second, and successful installation.  I can’t wait to start playing with some custom skins and modules!  This product may still be a bit clumsy in more than a few areas straight “out of the box”, but it doesn’t seem like there’re many issues you can’t fix yourself.

DotNetNuke
With all the hype around this product, I am quite keen to play (and work) with it, but initial impressions are not positive.  After working through an installation manual that could be better authored, must first attempt to access my portal (from the installation screen) I get the ubiquitous error below.

Now I realise a zillion things can go wrong with a complex installation, but then the application could be a little more helpful.

Server Error in '/DotNetNuke' Application.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
   DotNetNuke.HttpModules.UrlRewriteModule.OnBeginRequest(Object s, EventArgs e) +672
System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +109
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +69

What's in a Name?
Shakespear may have had some trouble had he been a developer.

This subject has been rehashed and brought up so many times before, but I've never seen this comprehensive a guide to naming conventions before.
Stupidist Pilot in the World
Would you give this man a job?  After my initial several rants about bad airline service, and the illiterate idiots that responded to those rants by asking about flights and prices, this man has surely got to be fucking with me:


To Whom It May Concern

I am JP Rossouw, a Captain for Solenta Aviation on the ATR42. I hold a valid SA ATPL and would like to apply for a position as First Officer. I have more thatn 3000 hrs and hold a valid Grade 2 flight instructors rating.

Would you be able to assist me in contact numbers, email and contact persons that I should send my application to?

Kind Regards,

JP Rossouw